CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
For fermented, read permeated. For desire, read devise. For moley, read motley. "Two or three errors" [spoiler -- it's three] from The Michigan Journal of Education, 1860.
If, in the language of flowers, friendship is a four-leaf clover, love is a daisy, and courtship is a rose, then divorce is an onion, marriage is a cabbage, and alimony is a lemon. From The Judge, 1913.
Here's someone who somehow managed to take 30 years to come up with a symbol for the word "the," only to gain the general public's indifference. From Popular Mechanics, 1929.